Tag Archives: decorating

On Defining Home Staging – Part 3; What skills does a good home stager need?

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Staged Room with dog

A staging compromise - the dog stayed.

In Part 1, I talked about why it is good for the industry and consumers to have a commonly understood definition of the term home staging. I also mentioned that consumers, if they have any notion of home staging at all, have been foggy about what it entails and confused by multiple overlapping and conflicting terms. In Part 2, I spoke of the confusion between decorating and staging and the differences between those two practices.

Besides the differences, there are some similarities between decorating and staging. Both use the same decorating principles to create a mood and define function of spaces. With their aptitude and training, decorators and interior designers often successfully add home staging to their list of services. They just have to remember on the staging project to substitute the target buyers for the decorating client. While stagers will try to analyze preferences and lifestyles for their target buying group, they can never name one individual. The staged home has to be somewhat neutral and anonymous.

Decorating is not the only profession with transferable skills for the job of home stager. Stagers come from all walks of life. Having been an accountant myself, I can easily see how an preparing budgets and estimating return on investment is important when getting a home ready to sell. And, who would have more practical experience with viewers reactions to various homes that a Realtor? However, there could hardly be a more perfect background for analyzing and reaching target buyers than a job in marketing.

After all, staging is not just about making homes pretty. It’s about making them sell. The first skill out of the stagers repertoire must be marketing savvy. The home stager needs to first determine target market and learn as much as possible about what they will be looking for. Only then will they be able to use their decorating talents to create a vision that strikes a cord with potential buyers.

To me, home staging is something done only for the purpose of selling a home. That definition helps me maintain focus on the target buyers. It helps me explain my recommendations to reluctant home owners who struggle to let go of their home as they know it. If there were ever a difference between what target buyers would want and good decorating, I would have to go with the buyers preferences. In home staging, the buyer is king (or queen.)

That being said, there are still compromises. As I mentioned in Part 2, home staging always has budget and time constraints. Sometimes it’s not feasible to do everything to get all the way to the buyers ideal. We just give him a suggestion of potential. Another reason to compromise is the occupant’s ability to maintain the final product of staging – the precise placement, the white glove cleanliness, and the five-star hotel depersonalization. Homes are, more often than not, still lived in by busy families. There are often kids, pets or even thriving home businesses which still must function.

In Part 1, I proposed the following definition:

“Home staging is the art and science of preparing a home to be shown for sale within time and budget constraints by creating maximum appeal for the most likely buyers, and, thereby helping it sell quickly and for the highest possible price.”

What do you think of this definition? Does it express the marketing aspect clearly? Does it differentiate Home Staging from Decorating sufficiently? Do you think the term home staging should include the other things we do to open our homes to the public which don’t anticipate a sale such as ‘staging’ for holidays, parties, special occasions or public tours? Do you think there are grounds for including make-overs or re-designs for living under the staging terminology?

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In the Kingston, Ontario region, you can call upon Martha Stanton-Smith of Rearrangements Home Staging for all your home staging needs. Visit the Rearrangements website at http://rearrangements.ca. Be sure to download your free Special Report “Get Off The Home Selling Roller Coaster: 5 Reasons Houses Don’t Sell and What You Can Do About Them.”

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On Defining Home Staging – Part 2; Confusion between decorating and staging

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Bathroom with burgundy tile

This bathroom is decorated, not staged

In Part 1, I talked about why it is good for the industry and consumers to have a commonly understood definition of the term home staging. I also mentioned that consumers, if they have any notion of home staging at all, have been foggy about what it entails and confused by multiple overlapping and conflicting terms.

When consumers start to shop for a staging service, the confusion becomes quite frustrating. The yellow pages many of the smaller centres don’t even have a Staging category. When the would-be-client flips to Interior Decorating or searches home staging online, they will see that many decorators also offer staging services.

While many decorators are also excellent stagers, they have to ‘switch hats’ to do so. Decorating a home is not the same as staging it. The thinking and the goals are different.

Good decorating customizes and personalizes the space to the preferences and lifestyles of those who will be using it. Decorating clients are encouraged to express their personality, to put their stamp on their home and often to incorporate displays of personal collections or treasured possessions. In home staging, because we don’t have the luxury of meeting the homes’s buyer ahead of time, the stager must keep the appearance somewhat anonymous and neutral. Any one of the target buyers must be able to imagine themselves living in the space with their own things.

In decorating, home owners have the luxury of letting their decorating evolve over time, waiting til they find the perfect piece to add.  In staging  there is a projected date to get the home on the market and it’s usually soon. Perfection in staging means a piece tells the right story and has the right colours to enhance the selling features; it doesn’t matter if the seller isn’t drawn to it personally.

Budgets are also quite different between decorating and staging jobs. For example, when a home owner is decorating a new kitchen which she will enjoy for several years, she may spend more. The re-sale value might be considered but it is seldom the number one influence in decorating projects.  However, in staging, owners hope to be moving on and are less inclined to invest in improvements. Return on investment when selling becomes the top criteria.

In Part 1, I proposed the following definition:

“Home staging is the art and science of preparing a home to be shown for sale within time and budget constraints by creating maximum appeal for the most likely buyers, and, thereby helping it sell quickly and for the highest possible price.”

What do you think of this definition? Does it differentiate Home Staging from Decorating sufficiently? Do you think the term home staging should include the other things we do to open our homes to the public which don’t anticipate a sale such as ‘staging’ for holidays, parties, special occasions or public tours? Do you think there are grounds for including make-overs or re-designs for living under the staging terminology?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the Kingston, Ontario region, you can call upon Martha Stanton-Smith of Rearrangements Home Staging for all your home staging needs. Visit the Rearrangements website at http://rearrangements.ca. Be sure to download your free Special Report “Get Off The Home Selling Roller Coaster: 5 Reasons Houses Don’t Sell and What You Can Do About Them.”

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Keep the Big Picture in Mind for Your Little House

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This afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting a young homeowner with foresight. He has a semi-detached home that needs a little work. He plans to do it in stages as he can afford it over the next two years. At that time he knows he will be moving and will have to sell so he’s hoping to make a little on his investment.

At first he thought he could just do each project in isolation. However after the first room had new flooring and he was trying to decide on flooring for the foyer that adjoined it, he started to ‘get it’ that everything was going to have to work together. His questions multiplied and he sought our help. It can be quite overwhelming for the homeowner who suddenly realizes how one project can snowball.

Many homeowners decide to do one room per year. That helps them break it up into manageable chunks to save their sanity and protect their bank account. There is a pitfall in this approach, however. If you don’t have an overall plan, your home can start looking very chopped up. Each year there are new trends. If your room of the year follows them, a decade later after 10 rooms have been done, you will have quite a diverse collection of looks.

I saw a good example of the room-of-the-year effect in the home our class staged when I took my Canadian Staging Professionals(TM) training in Kingston. Although it was a great house, it didn’t really flow. You could take a guess at the date of last decorating in each room and most of them really had no relationship to the whole.

master bedroom was neutral and up to date

pink and grey ensuite


These two rooms, a master and its ensuite, should relate to each other. Obviously they were re-decorated at different times without any master plan. This illustrates that a little professional help from an interior decorator or designer could really help you maintain some consistency throughout your home as you do your re-decorating bit by bit. Then, should you decide to sell, your home stager can easily help you pull together whatever you have using a few accessories and perhaps a little re-painting. The pictures are from CSP(TM), Kingston, 2006.